Water Taxi for Grand Canal Tour

The best place to get a recommendation is from your hotel or host. Have you asked them?

This is the official water taxi company- you can send them an email explaining your needs thru their contact form
https://www.motoscafivenezia.com/en/

A vaporetto DIY can work just fine- start your ride at the P Roma stop so you get a front row seat- early am or evening probably best times. RS has a DIY Grand Canal tour via vaporetto that is quite sufficient.

Get Your Guide, Viator, etc all offer water taxi tours- they don't actually run any of the tours as they are resellers but if you search the listing you can usually find the actual operator.

hey hey savsens
ChristineH has given you a great site for private water taxis. have used them 4 or 5 times with a reservation.
at the top of web page is 3 short black straight lines, click for useful information, scroll down to bottom of page, fill it out for a quote of a grand canal tour with your info, send request and wait for answer (check email or spam mail) good luck and enjoy it
aloha

Thanks for those suggestions, ChristineH and Princess Pupule.

I'm staying at an Airbnb in Cannaregio, so won't have the benefit of a hotel concierge. I'll check Motoscafi Venezia. I did request quotes from them twice for a private water taxi from the airport and never got a response. Maybe the third time will be a charm.

ChristineH, are you thinking after 7pm for an evening vaporetto?

They won't answer if you are headed to one of the destinations listed here: https://www.motoscafivenezia.com/en/ticket/choose-destination.php

Regarding the tour, I'd go to the closest Water Taxi dock and simply ask for a quote to sail along the all Canal Grande and return to the same dock. They are not exactly overrun with customers these days.

I like the idea of getting a water taxi on the fly. That would allow more flexibility in the day. If I chose this option, would you happen to know what would be a reasonable price for a 1 to 1.5 hour tour?

Take a water taxi to Arsenale or Giardini, and a vaporetto aka water bus for the return journey.

Thanks for all your replies. I've decided to take the Grand Canal tour via private water taxi. That will work best with our schedule and we won't have to deal with the crowded vaporettos.

I'm trying to decide on the time for the tour. Is there a difference in the experience between 4pm and 5pm? Is one better than the other? We'll be there in mid-October.

Thanks!

There will be little difference between 4pm and 5pm. The Grand Canal is essentially Main Street.

We did this when we were there beginning of March. Get the Rick Steves Venice Pocket guide or Italy guide. The RS guidebook has pages dedicated to the Grand Canal sites. You can do your own tour. Buy a Vaparetto pass--unlimited rides for your chosen timeframe. People hop on and hop off the Vaparettos. So can you if something catches your eye. The Guidebooks do an excellent job of describing the highlights and history of what you see. Go up one side, down the other. It is fun. You can do a day tour and then go at night. (we got fogged out so our night sailing was a bust). We were staying near the bus and train station area. The 1st Vaparetto stop and main ticket office was right there.

I would say in Mid October you won't have the summer crush of crowds.

You can also download the audio tour of the Grand Canal, narrated by Rick. Click the Watch, Read, Listen link on the left side of this screen. It's designed for riding the vaporetto.

Piling on to say that the water taxis are great, especially if you have a driver who is friendly, but the Vaporetto is fantastic and economical if you do it in the morning or in the evening before/after the tourist crowds if the crowds are your main concern.

agreeing about the use of the Vaporetto to see and admire the Grand Canal buildings and atmosphere.

When planning the time, consider that most workers in Venice don't live there. So they commute to and from work, so there are for sure rush hours at those times where the workers need to use the vaporetto services and add significantly to the crowding, sometimes very crowded. Add the workers going home to day trippers and cruise ship passengers all going back to the mainland in late afternoon and it is like a New York City subway at 5pm.

Boats going the other way can be mostly empty.

Workers arrive in the morning, but are a bit more spread out, and the day trippers and cruise ship passengers haven't arrived yet, or for the few which actually dock in Venice anymore - haven't finished breakfast.

So my experience is that there are golden hours. After dinner as the lights in the palaces come on, even later when it is dark, early morning when all is quiet, or a little later heading up the canal towards Ferrovia.

Late morning, early afternoon have less perfect photography light and more day trippers, but I have found if you get on at the right time and get the right seats, the vaporetto is perfect. I've never used a Venice water taxi.

I have a book with photos and stories of every building on the Grand Canal, better than any taxi driver, and Ricj Steves' book and tour is very good. Cheap too. Hard to beat free for a tour.